


Trapped Forever

by orphan_account



Series: Robot With a Human Brain [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bad Driving, Child Abuse, F/M, M/M, Paedophilia, lots of mini time-skips, physical fight, sexual contact, teen runaway, very messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:18:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6194866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a frantic call in the middle of the night Eren revisits a part of his past he wasn't entirely done with. </p>
<p>Jean is the same as ever - different in some ways that Eren cannot begin to sense.</p>
<p>Considering Eren's parents had gone the house is still much too full.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trapped Forever

Eren squinted through the windscreen of his car. He needed to take it to a carwash, or at least swipe a rag over the glass of the windows again. It was getting markedly difficult to read road signs and Eren had almost got lost on the way up here. He reasoned getting back home wouldn’t be impossible. He would have a passenger to help him on his way and it was easier to find a place you were familiar with. The more immediate problem was working out whether or not he was watching Jean argue with some kid in a wheelchair.

After a minute or so of watching Maybe-Jean folding his arms and pouting, Eren was almost certain it really was Jean. As he was winding down his window – manually because after the accident he got into a few months prior he couldn’t afford to pay for the damage to get fixed and the mechanic he went to had an odd sense of humour – Maybe-Jean leaned right into the face of the kid in the wheelchair, braced his hands on either side of the seat and pushed hard enough for the kid in the wheelchair the flail in an attempt to remain upright.

Eren didn’t bother to tamp down his smile. Even Actual-Jean would have felt some guilt at pushing the kid over.  Maybe-Jean watched the kid in the wheelchair with reproach and Eren was completely sure that this had to be him.

“Jean!” Eren called out of the car window.

Jean and his friend both flinched, Jean scowling at his friend before they both turned to look at Eren, grinning widely and waving at them from across the street. Jean didn’t spare so much as another glare for his friend before he had sprinted across the road, gangly but determined, as he rounded the car and yanked open the passenger door.

“Drive,” Jean instructed as he kicked his backpack into the footwell of the car and slammed the door shut. The Lisa Simpson bobble-head on the dashboard trembled.

Eren resolutely did not start the ignition.

“What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” Eren shot back almost gleefully. He hadn’t realised that he would miss this sullen kid so much.

“Are we going or what?”

“You really want to take me up on that offer of going to Alaska? I knew there was a true fan in there somewhere!”

“What are you even talking about?” Jean grumbled. He squinted sourly past Eren. Eren glanced quickly at Jean’s friend who was peering over at the car cautiously. He couldn’t tell whether Jean didn’t know what Eren was referencing because he truly hadn’t so much as thought about The Simpsons since the last time he saw Eren, or if he was distracted by his friend across the street. 

“What’s with him?” Eren asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the friend.

“Dunno.”

“Is it okay to just leave him out there?”

“He’s fine. He’s a big boy and he can get home by himself.”

“What, like you?”

“Piss off,” Jean grumbled. He sank down in the seat. He sniffed loudly once, twice, and then rubbed at his nose.

“Yeah, maybe I will. You’ll have to get out of my car for that much though.”

Jean stared determinedly out of the window and Eren tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Jean was so stubborn but Eren already knew that. It had almost been a year since Eren and Armin had finished the Springfield Tour. Eren couldn’t really remember watching an episode of The Simpsons since then but a lot could happen in almost a year and it was a very specific thing to try to remember.

The baking warmth of home had gradually seeped away as Eren drove towards the cooler north. The breeze was still sharp as it wisped by the open window but Eren decided against closing it when his eyes met a frown across the street. Jean’s friend was still watching them. He probably didn’t know about last summer and Eren wondered whether there was anybody who did know the lengths Jean went through to visit an old neighbour. It was weird and definitely extreme but Eren could hardly cast aspersions when he had let Jean be extreme.

Eren really hadn’t expected a call. Rushed and breathless in the middle of the night, Jean had said Eren should pick him up after school. He hung up quickly and it had made Eren smile. Jean hadn’t been good at asking for things either, but he’d had to return the call and salve the frazzled nerves of someone who was close to being discovered with a stolen phone just so he could run away from home all over again.  

The temptation to ask Jean why he had whispered so desperately to him in the middle of the night was something that loomed in the back of Eren’s skull. It was puffing up in the backseat of the car and as it expanded the weight of it on Eren’s shoulders became more bothersome. He couldn’t ask though. Not when he was sure Jean probably would get out of the car and try to travel the way he had a year ago. For a kid, Jean was fearless. Or perhaps it was because he was a kid.

“Put on your seatbelt,” Eren said.

“What?”

“You don’t want to die, do you?”

Jean muttered something under his breath as he made a show of buckling his seatbelt and Eren wondered why Jean would hope he was a bad driver. When Eren had received his fill of impudence from Jean in the form of a hard glare, Eren started the ignition to the car. It wheezed into life and Jean felt it necessary to mutter something under his breath again. Eren paid him no mind and only briefly glanced at the Jean’s abandoned friend as he looked around for obstructions to his car trundling along the road.

“Quick question,” Jean grunted when Eren finally reached the junction at the end of the street, “Does this thing not reach the speed limit anymore?”

“That’s very cute,” Eren said in lieu of an answer. His precious baby could reach the speed limit, thank you very much, it just depended on what the speed limit was. The car had no problems with the smooth thirty miles per hour speed limits but it was for the best that he didn’t mention that the interstates caused more of an issue as the car choked and rattled the more its capabilities were exceeded.

“Your crappy car isn’t even going to make it out of the state, is it?”

“Considering I made it the thousand miles up here I’d say that is a strange conclusion to come to.”

“When did you start driving? Last week?”

Eren decided the road needed his attention. So what if he had haphazardly shoved some clothes and a toothbrush into a sports bag and flung it into the passenger seat of his car just half an hour after Jean had called. It had taken him almost a week of driving until the car’s engine overheated or his eyelids became too heavy or he couldn’t quite find his way. He was glad he had saved the handful of cash swiped from the jar in kitchen as he left for the drive. He barely had enough to rent a room so he could charge his phone and take a shower seeing as he had already had to refuel his car twice on the drive up to Wilmette. He was just about presentable enough in creased clothes he decided he could get another wear out of and his skin cracking beneath the musty cotton because the soap in the bathroom that morning had dried out his skin.

“I got here, didn’t I?”

Jean huffed and turned to look out of the window. The seatbelt caught on his T-shirt as it twisted around his torso and he curled on his side. Eren supposed that was the closest agreement he was going to get. Jean wasn’t cute at all. He didn’t so much as mutter under his breath for so long that Eren wondered whether he was sleeping.

Eren started when the sun had dipped beneath the horizon and Jean sneezed very loudly. Sharply pulling at the steering wheel was probably the longest millisecond of Eren’s life. And just like that he was back in the outside lane on the freeway and his car chugging along like it hadn’t nearly swerved into the barrier. His ears rung with half-hearted honks from the cars behind. He tried to loosen his grip on the steering wheel but found that made them useless for anything beyond trembling. So he reaffirmed his grip and licked at his lips, wondering whether they had been dry the whole time.

“Are you trying to kill me?”

Eren shook his head, tried to salve the dryness of his lips once more but found the skin to be rough against his tongue. His throat cracked as he opened his mouth to tell Jean not to be stupid and clearing his throat made his voice no less abrasive.

Reluctant to tear his eyes away from the road, Eren spared a quick flicker of his eyes to see Jean clinging to the passenger door and the dashboard with his own eyes glued to the windscreen.

“Obviously I’m not… Stupid. That was your fault anyway.”

“Me? What did I do? Grab the wheel right out of your hands?” Jean asked shrilly.

“Your massive sneeze. I thought a bomb went off or something. Like, my ears are still ringing now.”

Jean stretched his legs out properly and looked askance at Eren. His eyes intermittently flitted between Eren’s face and the white lines on the asphalt. It was not like it was going to happen again – it was not as though Eren had swerved with the intent to rattle them both into caution. It was just an accident. Regardless Jean was not alone in releasing a sigh of relief when Eren exited at the next junction.

 

They were quiet. For almost four days they hardly shared any words besides one person grumbling about being hungry or tired or bored or sick of one Taco Bell order stretched over two days and the other muttering about other people having it worse. Worse than the wordlessness was the inventory of Moments Eren was mentally cataloguing. The Moments had nothing to do with dry comments that were followed by pointed sighs, the intent to scoff at Eren’s empty pockets carried by each breath. The Moments were fewer and farther between, a significant glance and a timid brush of fingers, an exaggerated curve of the spine when stretching, a falsetto lilt when humming a song reminiscent of the previous Summer.  

The silence had grown too loud by the evening of the fourth day. One taciturn eye roll as the sun dipped below the horizon was all it took for Eren to decide to do _something_. The thought of trying to force a natural air pained him but this was nothing like last year.  

The dim headlights on Eren’s car were juddering over the road ahead of them by the time Eren thought of the _something_ he could do to curb the awkwardness that was buzzing against the windows and buffeting against Eren’s head.  He glanced quickly at Jean to ensure he was at the required level of disinterest for Eren to be sneaky. Eren was casual, watching the road as he leaned over to open the glove compartment. His hand was steady on the wheel and he didn’t look over his shoulder to check for Jean’s reaction again. His eyes simply slipped down from the lonely road ahead into the crammed darkness of the glove compartment. Eren returned his eyes to the road and used his hand to feel around amongst the discarded receipts, food wrappers that had gained residence long before Jean had appeared again, cracked sunglasses, crumpled postcards, spare bobbleheads, a few books that Eren knew nothing about and finally his hand slid across the right shape of plastic. Eren slammed the glove compartment shut and settled back in the driver’s seat.

Jean’s only reaction was to say, “You didn’t get any worse at driving.”

 

It wasn’t too long later that they stopped. Eren parked them at a 24-hour Walmart and hoped that being in the furthest corner from the entrance would not look too suspicious. They pushed the backrests of the seats all the way down and were practically settled to sleep before Eren even built up enough courage to speak.

 “I’ve got a present for you,” Eren said. His eyes strained against the darkness between the car seats and Eren belatedly wondered whether this would make this more or less awkward. It was something he had always intended to mention, but it never seemed to be the right time when Jean was pretending to sleep, or they were both still wary from nearly dying, or Jean was grumbling about not even having eaten breakfast that morning. Waiting until they had decided to call it a night, the seats reclined back as far as they would go, seemed like a stupid idea now that he couldn’t see Jean’s face to gauge the reaction. It was probably a sneer or something else uncute, but being able to see the reaction would have helped a lot.

“What sort of present?” Jean asked carefully. “I don’t…”

Eren hesitated a moment. Jean didn’t elaborated on what he ‘didn’t…’ and only exhaled heavily enough for the air to stir at Eren’s cheeks. Eren sat up quickly and patted at the dashboard for his phone before using the light to lean over Jean’s ankles to search in the glove compartment. After rustling through empty cup noodle tubs and a half-eaten packet of ham Eren’s hands closed around the scratched case of the Nintendo 3DS that had been found wedged under the back seat ten months ago. He swiped away the notifications on the phone screen and tossed his phone back onto the dashboard, removing the temptation to wear down the battery, and slumped back into his seat. Blindly, Eren reached out with the DS until he heard Jean’s quiet “umph” from being jabbed in the stomach.

“Sorry.”

“I doubt it,” Jean grumbled. Then, “What’s… Is this…?”  

Eren stayed quiet. His eyes were beginning to adjust following the loss of light from his phone. He could just about see, not only hear, Jean curl on his side to flip the lid open on the DS and fiddle with the buttons and switches. Of course it wouldn’t work. Eren hadn’t found the charger along with the DS. Even with Mikasa’s DS charger at home, Eren had left the device sitting in the glove compartment of his car and tried not to think about it.

Jean sighed.

“Goodnight, Jean,” Eren mumbled. He rolled over to face the car door and waited for boredom to take him to sleep.

 

Eren knew Jean wasn’t a complete idiot. He was precocious and sour and he knew exactly what was happening long before the road signs started to mention Florida. At least Eren could exhale his relief when they passed the sign welcoming them to the Sunshine State and Jean said, “Why didn’t you take me?”

“What are you talking about?” Eren asked against the tightness of his throat.

“Er… Last time you took me where I asked to go. That was why I called you. Because I wanted to go there again.”

“Oh. I thought you just missed us.”

“Well I didn’t miss you.” Jean grumbled into the heel of his hand.

“You didn’t get any cuter, you know,” Eren grinned.

“Piss off,” Jean said. Tiredly, perhaps lacking the venom he really wanted his words to have. He didn’t say anything more after that.

 

Jean waited until Eren opened the passenger door of the car before he gripped the handles of his backpack and stepped out of the car. He sniffed loudly and rubbed at his nose. He had grown and despite their time together Eren had not taken the time to really focus on that. Jean had grown taller and broader and more sullen.

“Do you remember speaking to Mikasa last year?”

“Sort of,” Jean shrugged.

“She’ll love you, promise,” Eren grinned. He punctuated the promise by slamming shut the car door and strolling up to the front door. Before his hand had gripped the handle the door was torn open to reveal Mikasa glaring icily at him from across the threshold.

“Care to explain yourself?” She asked with a very steady voice.

“Hi, Mikasa. It’s nice to know that you were so worried about me.”

“Where have you been? You could have been dead for all I knew. You didn’t even tell Armin where you were going.” There was not a single waver in her tone but Eren took a step back, something in the air as well as past experience warning against continuing his approach. 

“I’m here now,” Eren tried weakly.

“Because that makes up for the past two fucking weeks.”

“It’s in the past now. Do you want me to go back in time and send you a text, ‘I’ll be back soon so don’t bother filing the Missing Person’s report!’”

Mikasa’s face only briefly cracked and she shook her head gently before returning to the impassive impression she had cultivated so well.

“See, you weren’t even that worried,” Eren said, his chin jutting out of its own accord and his spine renewing in strength. Though a minute shiver of fear pricked at his back when arms slithered around Mikasa’s waist. Eren was able to school himself back into teenage petulance before Annie recognised the prior expression. She rested her head on Mikasa’s shoulder leisurely, though she must have been standing on her tip-toes to do even that much.

“I told her not to bother. We’d be better off if you wondered off and lived in your little dreamland forever. She worries too much.” Annie turned her most sanguine blankness to Eren before her gaze shifted. “Who is he?”

“Jean,” Eren said quickly. Then he glanced over his shoulder and waved Jean over to the door. “If you don’t mind we’ve been travelling for quite a while and we could both do well with showers and actual beds.

 

 

“Is that the kid from last year?”

Eren might have squealed the tiniest bit. He redoubled his grip on the towel at his waist and tried not to look so much like his heart was hammering its way through his chest.

“Mikasa, hi.”

Her arms remained folded over her chest and her face didn’t so much as crack in the silence between them. Eren vaguely wanted to ask how long she had been standing outside the bathroom door but he doubted he would get any type of reply. He suppressed a shiver and nodded quickly.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I suppose he’s taking a shower,” Eren said, rubbing at his arm to wipe away a tickle of a tickle of water.

“Cute.”

“You wanted to meet him, didn’t you?”

Mikasa almost laughed. The sound was more of an aggressive wheeze but Eren was beginning to shiver and he couldn’t particularly see the humour.

“Bull. Shit. Come on, Eren, you disappeared for two weeks and you come back with that kid. You can at least explain that to me, can’t you?”

Eren exhaled, loosened his fingers where they clutched at his towel, stiff and curled too tightly, and he shrugged. It wasn’t really a big deal, so he didn’t have an explanation that would appease Mikasa. He hadn’t thought he would need to construct some meaningful story about why Jean was here. Eren did things and it was Mikasa who worried of there were any consequences.

“He just needed to get away for a bit.”  

“Right. And you, did you need to get away for a bit?”

Eren shook his head and then shrugged. He had no idea what Mikasa wanted from him, what she wanted him to say or do, and two weeks of driving and causing himself back pain were starting to catch up with him. He made to squeeze past Mikasa and return to his room but her hand around his wrist stopped him.

“Armin has only been a supervisor for a month. He’s still on probation and then you fuck it up for him like this?”

Eren reels back but Mikasa’s grip tightened some. She leaned in close enough for Eren to shrink against the wall but for all her proximity her words were a whisper, not a bite.

“It is bad enough that one of his staff members went AWOL but his best friend. It’s like you’re really trying to humiliate him. You’re shitty enough at being a friend and being a worker when you’re here. But to run out on him like that…” 

“I guess I’m sorry,” Incredulity passed over Mikasa’s face and Eren really wondered what she wanted him to do. “I’ll talk to him, don’t worry about it.”

Mikasa released her grip and stalked off down the stairs.

 

 

Eren had tried to help out with cooking dinner. It was as weak as peace offerings came but Mikasa shoved him away from the kitchen and told him to go to sleep. He fully intended to do just that as a spiteful part of himself sneered at Mikasa’s insistence that his help wasn’t needed. It was just that his bed was mostly occupied.

Eren’s bedroom was the box room so there was barely a metre of space between their faces as Eren leaned against his wardrobe and watched the rise and fall of Jean’s chest. There was a steady swell and recede of air in Jean’s lungs that escaped as slow saws.

Eren’s eyes rolled a few times but ultimately he watched the calm of Jean’s snoozing.

A crash at the door stirred Eren. He rubbed at his eyes and blearily glanced over at Annie who was standing in the doorway.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Annie said. She continued to stare at Eren and her fingers wriggled on the door handle. She finally added, “Watching the kid sleep, right?”

“No. He’s in my bed, where am I supposed to sleep?”

“I wonder. See you downstairs.”

Eren had no idea what that was about. It wasn’t outside the norm for Annie to be weird though so he hastened to wake Jean up and get some food in his belly.

Jean, tired and rubbing at his eyes, lagged behind Eren as he followed him down the stairs. It could have been shyness. Maybe. Eren realised that his knowledge of Jean was minimal. He knew that Jean could be cryptic and he could be blunt enough for stars to fly in the vision of the person he was speaking to. Eren had experienced enough confusion topped off with a statement that made the air whoosh out of his lungs to be familiar with the distinct sense that he had at some point been manipulated. He knew that Jean was brash, fists always clenching tighter against any hints of fear. Running away and asking people for rides seemed like it required a certain amount of boldness but Eren couldn’t tell whether Jean was always like that or if desperation had drawn the quality out of him.  

It was very possible that bringing Jean home had been a mistake. Maybe even more of a mistake than dropping him off the previous year had been. Jean was quiet now. He had been on the drive down from Illinois and it was very possible that he would continue to be quiet. Eren wasn’t quite sure what the difference was last year. He wasn’t sure what had made conversation come more easily between them.

At the foot of the stairs Eren asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

The reply was short, quiet, but hard enough to brook no more questioning. Eren nodded and lead the way to the kitchen. 

The dining table in the kitchen had been laid with rough place settings. It was definitely Annie’s lazy handiwork and Eren said as much when he sat down. He hadn’t particularly anticipated Annie extricating herself from Mikasa at the cooker to come over and swipe his cutlery to the floor.

“Wonderful hospitality as always,” Eren said sagely.

“I feel it’s an honour to be able to treat the fans of my handiwork.”

“It’s not that handiwork that I’m a fan of.”

Annie blinked away her surprise, threw a surreptitious glance over her shoulder to Mikasa loudly plating the dinner, and leaned closer to Eren. “If you want to die there is no need to be so round-about. I’m sure if you asked Mikasa very nicely you wouldn’t have to wake up ever again.”

“I reckon you’d miss me too much.”

“Who would miss you? I doubt that even the kid would miss you.”

“Jean,” Eren corrected quickly.

Annie went over to the other side of the table to take a seat. She sat opposite Jean and cast him a wry smile as she said, “Yeah. I’m sure Jean wouldn’t even miss you.”

“What about Armin? He’d _definitely_ miss me.”

“Nope.” Mikasa punctuated her denial by plonking down Eren’s plate hard enough for peas and slices of carrot to roll to their escape that was mostly hindered by the scrappy slice of beef that had flopped over the edge of the plate. “Armin has already placed his request for you to get bumped off.”

Eren waited until Mikasa had given out all of the plates before complaining. “Why does it look like someone has already tried to eat mine?”

“Because I’m mad at you,” Mikasa said matter-of-factly.

“I only have one potato and it has been bitten in half! Look there are teeth marks!”

“That’s right,” Mikasa agreed.

Eren wasn’t happy about the fact that his messy serving of food definitely featured some creative sabotage – his plate was the only one to feature such a thing – but he knew very well that grumbling about it wouldn’t change a thing.

Mikasa and Annie filled Eren in on the most recent slew of emails sent from ports around the world. Eren couldn’t quite remember how long his parents had been gone for. The around the world cruise was to last for four months but it was information that continued to elude Eren. The harder he tried to remember how his cheeks ached from the pretended well-wishes of dropping his parents off at the port, the harder he found it to remember how many hours Annie had left it before unofficially moving in to impose on the house that she wasn’t often welcomed into. 

Annie had certainly made herself at home. It appeared almost second nature for her to scroll through Mikasa’s phone to find the specific email which featured a photograph of Carla Jaeger ineffectually warding off the calculated flirtation of a man trying to sell her an anti-wrinkle cream.

Jean’s eyes were focused on the plate before him and Eren wondered whether he was eventually going to eat considering he had spent the majority of his time at the table slicing chunks of carrot into an orange mush. 

“Has Mikasa told you about the time she nearly demolished Mina’s house when she was looking for you?”

Mikasa stilled and the line of her shoulders went taut along with the clench of her jaw. She didn’t look up at Eren, she only shifted her gaze to view Annie’s disaffected profile.

“Why on earth would she do that?”

“I don’t know, Eren, after telling us you’d gone to Mina’s you come back in the middle of the night to sneak around and then we don’t hear from you again. You stop showing up at work, you don’t reply to any calls or texts. Mina was allegedly the last person to know where you were. But like I said, it wasn’t worth getting the police involved. Your parents could make that call when they return.”

“Did you really do that?”

“I can see now that there was no need for that. I apologised at the time but I gave her a call earlier. Just to make sure that she knew how sorry I was.”

“Right,” Eren said, annoyance bubbling in the back of his throat. “Just so I’m clear though, when did you do this? At what point was it that you decided I’d been fucking Mina for too long and you had to come and drag me back home?”

Mikasa flinched and Annie scraped her chair loudly on the floor as she squeezed closer to the table to glare at Eren. “Don’t say things like that, you prick.”

“Why, would you rather call it _making love_?” Eren asked around his half-chewed half-of-a-potato.

Annie rolled her eyes without so much of a twitch of her lips. It was Mikasa who answered shortly, “It’s sex. Just call it sex. There’s no point in calling it anything else or having stupid conversations about it.”

“Keep your hair on,” Eren said lowly. His imploring expression yielded nothing from Annie who was almost smirking from behind the fork she had raised to her mouth.

“There’s no need to talk about this stuff. There’s a kid here.”  

Annie hummed, tapping her fork to her lips. “There’s that too, but I was mostly talking about the fact Mikasa actually cares about you despite the fact that you’re a useless fucking brat.”

 

 

“Thanks for taking me to work,” Armin said in lieu of a greeting when Eren opened the door. He must have got dressed quickly because the collar of his shirt was twisted around his neck and his ponytail was the most haphazard it had been in recent months. He stepped back, surveyed the holey socks on Eren’s feet, and asked, “You are still taking me to work, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. Do you want to come in first?”

Armin pulled a face and momentarily squinted up at Eren before shrugging. “Okay. You’re not going to make me late, are you?”

“No, of course not,” Eren said as he pressed the door shut behind Armin. He coughed drily. “Oh, I think I’m too sick to come into work today. Just thought I would mention that.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Eren spread his hands and tried not to feel too caught out. He knew he was being a shitty friend, Mikasa had explained it to him at length, but it was hard to face pressing buttons for the sake of frying food when any idiot could do it. Eren had slightly more important things to do and he wasn’t going to waste what little time he had eked out for himself. All he could do was offer a small, “Sorry!” and hope that Armin wouldn’t get into too much trouble.

“You know I would believe you a lot more if you weren’t so insistent on getting me demoted,” Armin sighed, punching Eren’s arm soullessly as he passed to walk into the living room. Eren remained by the door and listened to the surprise in Armin’s disembodied exclamation of, “Jean?”

Armin was back in the hallway in a flash, his hands fisted in Eren’s shirt and his eyes scorching.

“I’m going to need you to explain.”

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to be smarter than you. Can’t say it’s as satisfying as I thought it would be.”

“Eren, what the fuck?” Armin hissed. He pulled Eren down as though that would lower the volume of his voice but it was pointless when Armin had made such a fuss of fleeing the room at the sight of Jean.

“Surprise!”

“Why is he here?” Armin asked. There was an odd desperation in his tone and his eyebrows hadn’t stopped rising since he had come back out.

“Can’t you just calm down and not make a big deal out of this?”

“Obviously not! Eren he’s… We…!” Armin made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat and shoved Eren back. “Just take me to work, okay.”

 

 

Annie quickly shoved off her shorts and knickers at the same time. The motion wasn’t graceful or fluid and Eren had to dodge the elastic escape of the two garments twined together before she had scrambled to the edge of the bed and slowly lifted the hem of her oversized sweatshirt.

She was already wet. She had probably been soaking through the plain cotton of her knickers and Eren wished he had been able to see that. He wished he had been able to take his time and play with the outlines of her folds as they became more and more visible through the sodden material of her underwear. He could only hope for that luxury next time. It must have been a while for Annie, especially when she showed this level of enthusiasm, because Eren remembered the last time she had offered herself to Eren like this. After he had done all he could she had yanked on her shorts and muttered something about Eren being terrible before she stalked off down the stairs to drink Mikasa’s apple juice out of the carton.

As it was, Eren had another chance. He hadn’t had much practice since the last time but he had a feeling, just a niggling in the back of his mind, which assured him he would be roads better this time. He kneeled between the lazy vee of Annie’s legs and tried to breathe as he watched the softly glistening folds of dark pink.

Very slowly he trailed his hands up over her legs, against the direction of her leg hair. He grinned up at her and wondered whether this was a new thing or if she had simply forgotten to shave. Eren kind of hoped not shaving was going to become a habit of Annie’s. He apparently liked it. His fingers slowly dragged along her thighs, the barest of pressure as his fingertips got closer and closer to the place where her she was so prettily soaked. His mouth followed his fingers with very neat, dry presses of his mouth on her left thigh. Then the damp drag of his lower lip as he shifted the angle of his jaw to glance up at her.

Eren was so used to seeing Annie’s face pulled into some stern, disaffected expression, but she looked relaxed. She almost looked happy. It was nice. Eren sucked at the inside of Annie’s thigh, sunk his teeth into the patch of red until he heard Annie gasp softly. He moved his mouth closer and he could smell her at the top of his nose, at the back of his throat, and he had to use some restraint to only flick the tip of his tongue out as he moved across to nuzzle at her right thigh.

Her breathing was more laboured already and Eren was almost certain that she wouldn’t be able to pretend this had been a waste of her time. He grinned into the skin of her thigh, pinching some fat between his teeth gently before lathing his tongue over the abused skin.

Annie’s hands were hidden away in the rolls and swathes of her grey sweatshirt, still held high enough that her bellybutton was on show. Eren watched her face as he lazily pushed his thumb around her slit. It was nowhere near enough, not really, but it was enough for Eren’s stomach to tighten with want. He combed his fingers through the coarse gold that curled messily around her pussy.

“It’s rude to stare,” Annie muttered, a smattering of pink surfacing across the bridge of her nose.

“I’m a rude guy.”

“You really are,” Annie retorted. “To lie to me about this and then make me wait.”

“All part of the surprise.”

“Are you going to go down on me or what?”

Eren let his fingers still in the half-tangle they had been loosing out in Annie’s abundant pubic hair. He only grinned up at her brightly and let his knuckles drag up the leaking heat of her slit. “All in good time.”

“Exactly. I’m here for a good time, so hurry up. I’ve got things to do.”

“Whatever,” Eren snorted. He decided to let her stew for a few moments longer, licking and biting ever so gently at the skin just below her navel. When she began to squirm, the thick scent of her slickness wafting more closely, Eren decided that he had worked her up enough.

He licked up her slit a few times and tried not to smile too widely at the relieved sigh he heard drop from Annie’s mouth. On the fourth lick he swirled his tongue around her clit, the throbbing ruby a comforting point of hardness against Eren’s tongue. When Annie’s breath hitched – a barely audible difference because Annie played this game too well – Eren thrust his tongue into her pussy and thumbed at her clit with enough pressure to melt her squirms into shivers. She was failing to control the dynamics of her breathing and she sounded amazing above Eren as he sucked at the messy slickness that was already clinging to his lips and nose and cheeks.

A soft _whump_ of sweatshirt and a veil of darkness was Eren’s warning before sharp fingers were clinging to his scalp and holding his head in place as Annie thrust her pussy against his mouth. Her thighs had closed in around Eren’s ears and she had to be close – or she wasn’t close yet but Eren was just amazing at this. Whatever the truth, Eren was angling for having some godly skill at eating pussy. His claims were probably close to being refuted when he shifted his jaw to suck Annie’s clit into his mouth once more and he plunged two fingers right into the fluttering heat of her pussy. The movement of his fingers was so slick even after Eren had licked up all the wetness he could. He added a third finger and felt Annie buck wildly once though it took her another second and a groan to try to control her movements once more.

Eren did all he could with his limited movements, licking and sucking, and even a brief bout of tongue fucking until Annie let out a high-pitched whine and Eren couldn’t keep it up because his pride was very obviously restricting the movements of his face.

Her fingers released Eren’s hair as she came, slumped over him and shuddering and groaning while he pressed fingers inside her. Eren was quick to lick around his fingers and suck at the fresh wave of slippiness which seeped between the seams of his fingers and clung to her pubes. She was still coming and Eren stroked her inside walls and she jolted but her cry was muffled in Eren’s back. When she came down from the high of her orgasm Annie sat up and lifted her sweatshirt. Eren watched Annie push her sweaty hair away from her gleaming, red face.

“Okay, that was good,” She allowed quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” She smiled. “That was nice for once.”

“Awesome.”

 

 

Jean didn’t say much when he got home. He slurped at the massive drink clutched between his hands and he only nodded, eyes averted, when Armin said his goodbyes.

Armin gave Eren a hard stare before he left. That was no indication on what they had spent their day doing together. They had been out for a good few hours and Eren was surprised to see how subdued Jean had become. He could have just been tired. He could have had things he needed to think about. He might not have wanted to talk.

It could have been that simple.

Eren could hear the empty air being sucked roughly through the straw. Jean made his way to the kitchen to throw the cup away.

“Did you have fun with Armin?” Eren asked.

Jean shrugged.

 

 

“He didn’t let me in at first.”

Eren was so close to drifting off to sleep but the sound of Jean’s voice had him floundering against the current of tiredness. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes. The light from the hallway was a bright strip of yellow under the door and it cast Jean in a soft outline beside him.

“What?”

“After you guys dropped me off,” Jean mumbled. “I knew you were waiting for me still and I think he knew too. He didn’t let me in for, like, an hour. When he opened the door he was… different.”

“Your old neighbour?”

“Yeah. He… I stayed for a whole week. It was probably the best week of my life. I had to stay in the house and make sure none of his neighbours saw me, but we did stupid shit, you know. He’d make dinner and I tried to help but I’ve never cooked before. So he would tell me to set the table and that I could help him do the dishes instead. I could do the laundry though. We’d eat together and afterwards he would read one of his books. He has a lot of books, you know.”

“Does he?” Eren asked because he was a snorer and dropping off to sleep seemed too risky here. He took a deep breath but it did nothing to steady the hand that reached out for Jean’s shoulder. His hand was bathed in the faint yellow of the light outside the room. Jean flinched at the touch through the duvet but he relaxed when he realised that the weight of Eren’s hand was nothing more than that. He sniffed before he continued.

“I never knew that about him before, that he liked to read. I think it was Ulysses the week that I was there. He tried to read me some of it but I didn’t really get it. He said it was cute that I was trying to understand though. Afterwards we would… sleep together. He said it was nice to have me there beside him. He said… He…”

The quake of Jean’s shoulders got more and more violent until a howling gasp tore through his chest and he struggled to mute his groans with the pillow beneath his head. Eren held Jean tightly, forcing his other arm underneath Jean to winch him upwards and into Eren’s chest. He couldn’t keep Jean whole though. Jean was already trembling apart and Eren wished there was something he could do to adhere Jean’s fragmented grief.

 

 

Jean was quiet from the moment he woke up. As the week had progressed he had grumbled about how early it was, or how loud Eren snored, or how hungry he was. But he was quiet. He jumped when Eren shook his shoulder and by the time Eren had returned from the bathroom Jean didn’t have even the most minor complaint. He simply flipped shut the lid of his 3DS and went to brush his teeth and get changed.  

Eren didn’t like it.

It was stupid to get jealous of a toy but if it didn’t exist Eren wouldn’t need to feel jealous at all. He was the one who had returned it to Jean. It was his own fault that he felt this way. It occurred to him, in the solitude of his own room, so much emptier without the disinterested grunts and forcibly distant air, that he could change things.

Eren could get rid of it. He could get rid of the Nintendo 3DS. The chipped and scratched device that didn’t even hold a game. He could snap it in half. He could smash it into tiny pieces beneath determined stomping. He could toss it out the window and leave the glinting fragments for magpies to steal.

Before Eren’s fingers even had the opportunity to twitch in the direction of the blasted DS, Jean returned and slipped it into his pocket. He stretched with a groan and his fingertips curled as they aborted their journey to the ceiling.

“Ready?” Jean asked as though he was in the position to take the lead on things like this.

Eren rubbed at the sour expression of his face and nodded.

Eren bumped his hip against Jean’s as they walked to the door, but the carelessly casual action only had Eren tutting. He tugged at Jean’s shirt to stop him going any further and roughly reached into the pocket that was perpetually solid and squared against Jean’s thigh. He probably hadn’t intended to be annoying but Eren could not help but react to the slow writhing in his stomach. This stupid kid and his stupid souvenir.

Eren tossed the Nintendo 3DS in the direction on his bed and was only mildly disappointed at the soft _whump_ of its cushioned landing.

“Oi! What are you-“

“Is it going to kill you to spend ten minutes away from that thing? You don’t even play any games or anything. Come on, it’s breakfast.”

“Stop being a dick.”

“Aww I thought that was what you loved about me,” Eren cooed into Jean’s ear.

“Fuck off.”

Eren let Jean take the few steps to the top of the stairs before he wrapped his arms around Jean’s middle, shoved him against the wall and let the low chuckle out against Jean’s ear.

Eren’s nose followed the souring scent in the hollow of Jean’s neck and he licked at the saltiness in the dip just above his clavicle. Jean’s breath was ragged and the effort of his heaving breaths nudged against Eren’s chest with each laboured inhale. He was growing hard underneath the rough handling of his crotch. Just the same as before, no matter how much experience he claimed to have, it had all made him responsive to the barest hint of contact. Maybe his lack of endurance was an asset at a time like this, when in the hallway on the way down to breakfast they only had scant seconds before the threat of being discovered loomed.

Jean was quick but quiet. Eren wasn’t robbed of the thrill at the base of his spine. Mikasa’s footfalls were no heavier than a housecat’s and Armin had surely perfected teleportation so there was always an element of danger. Getting caught wasn’t the point though. Just the mere possibility of getting found out, of someone discovering him pressing Jean into the wall at the top of the landing, squeezing him into the corner besides the window that ignited the hallway each evening, was enough. The point to this was getting off as quickly as possible because it was convenient and just having Jean available for him was temptation enough.

“Is this it? Are you gonna cum in your pants like some kid?”

Jean grunted, gnashed his teeth and Eren wondered if he would leave a trail of drool on the wall.

“I won’t beg.”

“That’s a real shame, that,” Eren smirked into the side of Jean’s neck. “I’ll decide what happens then. You reckon you’re still loose, gaping for me like last night?”

Jean seemed torn between nodding and shaking his head, aborting attempts at both replies before sagging against the wall and pressing forwards into the hand that was kneading his erection.

“Imagine if I fucked you right here, against this wall where anyone could see. You’d love that, wouldn’t you? It’s a shame it will be over before anyone gets to see because I know how you love to perform.”

“Whatever. You… You’re just as hard as I am,” Jean groaned. Eren scoffed. He wasn’t going to dispute that fact when he was barely restraining the grind of his hips against Jean but he wasn’t going to give Jean an easy shot. 

“Hmm, maybe it would be better if I didn’t fuck you then. Maybe it would be better if I stopped right now.” Eren slid his hand up, away from Jean’s crotch and pressed his loose fist into Jean’s waist.

“Don’t, ah, d-don’t do it then.”

Eren backed away. He pulled down the hem of his t-shirt and prepared to adjust the gait of his walk and hopped down the stairs.

“Wait.” Eren paused at the weakness of Jean’s voice, looked up over his shoulder at Jean, crouching at the top of the stairs. “I hate you.”

“Same. We can finish after breakfast though, right?”

Jean grumbled something that was probably rude and Eren snorted as he walked off.

 

 

Eren’s bedroom door burst open. The sound of the seal being broken was explosive enough and the whooshing was still tumbling through Eren’s ears. It was not quite the warning Eren had hoped it would be when he had pressed the door firmly shut in its frame. The door clanked on the button of a discarded pair of jeans and Eren was still pushing his way between Jean’s legs when Annie gasped. 

Eren pulled out too quickly, hissing against the awkward action but his body felt even more rigid as Annie gaped in the doorway.

Jean was silent as he rolled over on the bed, stretching to retrieve the clothes he had shed not five minutes previously. Eren wished something would break. Jean was almost terse in his actions, pulling on his clothes efficiently and not making eye contact with anyone. He winced as he crawled off the bed and made his way to the door. He hesitated for a moment but upon deciding Annie wouldn’t do anything he dashed past her. The bathroom door slammed shut not long afterwards with enough effort to fissure Annie’s impasse.

“What the fuck?”

“I can-“ Eren realised where he was going with that sentence but he most certainly could _not_ explain. He settled for pulling on his underwear and tugging down the hem of his t-shirt.

Annie glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the bathroom. Her hands slipped, one from the door handle and the other from the door frame, and flumped uselessly at her sides. “He’s…”

She drifted slightly in the doorway and, in a strange moment of panic, Eren lunged across the space at her, yanked her arm roughly so that she stumbled into the room, yelling something that got lost in the rush of Eren’s blood stuttering its way through his body. The door slammed shut and Eren rested his back against it and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Let me out,” Annie said, the tightness not mediating the waver in her throat.

Eren shook his head jerkily and tried to swallow down the panic that was burning its way up his oesophagus.

Annie was dangerous. Eren could hardly keep her in his room forever. He doubted the intensity of her stare would dampen before his resolve crumbled. She was still and Eren had everything to lose.

Eren’s eyes were quick enough to catch the motion of Annie’s hands coming towards his face but he was just a shade slow of dodging. His hand swatted her away and caught her mouth sharply. She grunted her surprise as she ducked her head away and shoved his head away, her nails catching too sharply.

He hissed against the pain, felt the liquid heat seeping to the surface, pushed maybe a bit too sharply. Annie stumbled once and fell hard on her bottom.

Eren fixed his eyes on Annie as she pulled her knees to her chest, stared at a vague spot on the floor. He sunk to the ground, his t-shirt caught a few times on the flaking paint of the door.

There were a long few moments when Eren wondered whether Jean was okay. Whether he was crying or not. Whether he was angry at Eren. Whether he cared at all that Eren’s life might be disintegrating. All it had taken was some odd compulsion to be caught by a weighty stare.

“That’s fucked up, Eren,” Annie said, her voice thin and trembling minutely. She blinked rapidly but the glassy redness of her eyes only deepened beneath the sunlight bursting through the blinds at the window. “It wasn’t just that once, was it?”

“It’s not what you think it is,” Eren said, his hands pressed between his thighs tightly enough that he could feel the dizzy tingling pinging in his joints. 

“You’ve been touching up a kid.”

Eren felt his back hunch further. He could just about fight the bow of his neck to glance at Annie on the floor. The split lip had been an accident, just as she might claim the claw-marks to Eren’s face were accidents too – each one of them a shallow gouge of regret. Her tongue pressed against the scarlet fissure at her mouth and she shifted to re-cross her legs on the carpet. She looked up at Eren through the feeble bars of light cast on her by the window above Eren’s bed.

“You kidnapped a kid so you could touch him up. You’re a pervert.”

“That’s not what happened!” Spittle clung to Eren’s lips with the force of his words and Annie, as sarcastic as ever, delicately rubbed at her cheek.

“It’s strange, because I feel like I need to know, but I really do not want to hear it.”

Annie’s words were only half as convenient as Eren wanted them to be. Because she already knew. Or she already knew what she wanted to know and no amount of explanation would shake the arrangement as it stood in Annie’s mind. They were friends but Eren was under no such illusions that the fact would make her look upon him favourably. She was bull-headed enough that he had seen half a dozen people fall out with her refusal to be swayed by them.

Eren wasn’t a paedophile. This hadn’t been some premeditated ploy to have someone convenient to fuck – Annie was convenient enough while Eren’s parents were still on their cruise. She had practically moved in the second Eren’s parents had left, whether for Mikasa’s benefit or his own Eren could not be entirely certain. Now Annie looked as though she wished she hadn’t. The coughed lightly.

“I can’t believe I’ve been having sex with a paedophile.”

Annie was wrong about Eren.

“I’m not a paedophile,” Eren said, the tremble in his voice revealing his anger, fear. He was about ready to shake apart but he had no idea what would come of it.

He can’t have been a paedophile. He didn’t sit on park benches, cataloguing the soft tenderness of tiny, hairless calves and thighs of the children rushing around and squealing in delight. He didn’t drive around the suburbs, car coming to a crawl and the window winding down beside some bored kids on the street so he could offer to show them something really cool if they got into his car. He didn’t trawl the internet for seedy forums where he could trade images for even more explicit posing of faceless kids who were too young to say no if they even understood what was happening. He didn’t pose as some kid, messaging children online and gaining their trust, putting ideas into their heads, asking to meet up but only if it was a secret. He didn’t offer stressed-out neighbours a chance to relax or get the finer details of redundancy sorted out by taking their kid off their hands for a while, plying him with all the words he wanted to hear and gifting him with things he wasn’t afraid to ask for in exchange for sex.

Eren’s hand tightened on his knee and he shook his head. He _wasn’t_.

“He’s a child, Eren, what do you think that means?” Annie’s words all seemed too huge to comfortably fit in her mouth before she said them. She too shook her head, though for markedly different reasons to Eren and she gasped a few shuddering breaths before she went on. “You’ve manipulated a child. He’s not old enough to consent to anything so, however long this has been going on, you’ve been raping him.”

“Annie, no! I di-“

Annie crawled across the floor before Eren and held his shoulders tightly. Her eyes bored into his and for just a moment Eren was certain there was a glimmer of pity there. Just somewhere. And then he was on the floor, having been shoved carelessly. Eren only had half a second to register what was happening, Annie glaring down at him coldly for a sliver of a moment. She bolted, kicking out at Eren’s hands as he grabbed at her ankles, and she yanked the door open with a loud rush of air that echoed in Eren’s ears, the thumping of her footsteps down the stairs in tandem with the stuttering of Eren’s heart.

“Annie, wait!” Eren yelled. He pushed himself from the ground at a run, almost colliding with the bannister outside his bedroom door. He flung a hand out to ground himself and pulled his body up. There was a moment when he hesitated outside the bathroom door, knuckles poised and ready to knock. The muffled snuffles on the other side of the wood could wait. The more pressing matter was the choked pleading of Annie downstairs.  

He dashed down the steps, rolled over his ankle when he got to the bottom, and rushed to the living room where Mikasa was only half dressed in her work uniform and humming at Annie’s insistence that she had to listen.

“Shut the fuck up right now.”

“He’s a fucking paedophile,” Annie spat out with a bubble of blood that flecked the air. Eren was too stung by the acrid words to notice the punch Mikasa threw until she was rubbing her knuckles and Annie was gingerly pressing a hand to her jaw.

“Annie, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mikasa said with steely steadiness.

Annie’s jaw tightened and the brightness of her eyes extinguished with a flash. She licked her lips and wiped at her nose with both hands and she stared hard at the ground. “So it’s like that.”

Mikasa’s fingers spread out at her sides before curling back into trembling fists. Annie eyed the fists before glancing at Eren. Even with Mikasa standing between them, Annie’s defeated ferocity singed the tips of Eren’s toes.

The front door slammed with Annie’s retreat, tremors in the foundations of the house.

Mikasa didn’t look up once as she pulled her t-shirt over her head. She even managed to fasten her name badge to her chest before her fingers stopped working and she scrubbed at her face witht eh heels of her palms and she collapsed into the nearest chair.

Mikasa’s shoulders trembled where she had sunk into the red leather armchair they had managed to salvage from an old neighbour. It had been Mikasa’s idea to ask about the chair when she spied unhappy faces, huffing and puffing and redder than the cracked leather of the chair they were hauling through the front door. She had rescued it from them with a lot less effort and they had seemed grateful that they didn’t need to bother with disposing of it any longer.

That was what Mikasa did, she found problems and then she thought up the most obvious solutions. After they moved in there was nowhere to sit and Mikasa solved the problem. She had done it a million times before and Eren waited for the moment when she lifted her head and glared at Eren and told him exactly what was what.

The moment never came.

“Mikasa,” Eren said quietly.

Nothing.

Aside from the jagged rise and fall of her shoulders, Mikasa could have been petrified, curled in on herself, never to react to Eren’s voice again.

That wasn’t the Mikasa Eren was used to though.

He tried her name a few more times. “Mikasa.” He crept closer to her on his knees and tried again. “Mikasa.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Mika-“

“Don’t touch me!”

The screech was raw as it tore from her throat and her chest heaved as she leapt up and away from Eren. She held her hands out before her and sunk her teeth into the wobble of her lower lip as her eyes, red-rimmed and clouded with moisture, darted between Eren and the door.

Eren had never seen Mikasa cry before.

“Mikasa-“

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” She screamed.

As she shook the words out of her mouth, a few strands of her dark hair stuck to the dampness of her cheeks.

Eren’s throat was too dry and no amount of throat clearing fixed that. There was an itch at the backs of his eyeballs and it only grew more intense with the strain on his throat. He managed to choke out a very thin, “Please,” but Mikasa wasn’t having any of it.

“You don’t get to talk to me right now. You don’t get to try to explain. You don’t… You don’t get to ask anything of me,” Mikasa said, the effort of keeping her voice mostly level enough to have her scrunching her eyes shut and breathing raggedly.

Eren wasn’t very good at coming up with his own solutions. The only solution he could formulate was to scrub roughly at his cheeks because his own tears stung. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? Do you even know why you’re apologising right now?”

“I-“

“Do not speak to me,” Mikasa spat succinctly. “I know what I said to Annie but she was right, wasn’t she? You’re fucking sick.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry-“

“It’s been right in front of my eyes the whole time, but…”

“I’m trying to-“

“Eren. He’s a child, don’t you understand that? He was a child when you were driving him across the country and he still a – Oh my god.” Mikasa quietened considerably and pressed her hands to her mouth. A helpless whine escaped her. Eren was trying to keep his own tears silent but that didn’t work in practice when to do that he had to stay calm while watching Mikasa’s ruddy cheeks glisten and she shuddered with her confusion.

“What?”

“Please tell me that you didn’t – Not last year – Eren!”

“You don’t understand-“

“Don’t!” The single syllable sliced across Eren’s chest and it seemed the word was enough to make Miaksa stagger backwards herself, hands aloft defensively. She shook her head frantically, eyes squeezed shut and sucked sharp breaths between tight teeth. “Don’t try to justify this.” 

“Please, we didn’t want to at first, but if we didn’t do it he would have run away to someone else,” Eren said. He cringed at the whine in his voice but was more surprised that Mikasa had let him speak at all.

Mikasa’s jaw tightened and the glisten of her eyes bulged. “We?”

“What?”

“Who is ‘we’, Eren? Who didn’t want to do what?”

Eren rubbed at his eyes and tried to remember what he had said. When he dropped his hands from his eyes Mikasa was staring at him. She sniffed wetly.

“Are you trying to tell me that Armin had something to do with this? You finally realised how badly you’ve fucked up so you’re trying to drag him into this too?”

Eren shrugged away Mikasa’s words. He jogged halfway up the stairs, swallowed back the bunged-up snottiness of his tone before calling out, “Jean, come on. I’ll take you now.”

“Eren.”

Jean was down the stairs in less than a minute, backpack in hand and eyes red and puffy. He tried a small smile that didn’t quite form fully on his lips.  

“Eren.”

“I’ll see you later, Mikasa.”

“Eren!”

Eren pulled himself out of Mikasa’s grip. The action was a bit rough and he flattened out the stretch in his t-shirt with a tight smile.

“If you go now you can’t fix anything. Hold on for just-“

“Don’t,” Eren’s voice cracked and the prickling at his eyes and nose was too much. He scrubbed at his eyes with loose fists. “Don’t worry about it, Mikasa. Okay? It’s okay.”

“What does that even mean? Where are you going?”

Eren unlatched the front door. Jean was the first out and hopped down to the car on the drive. Eren followed and opened the car. They both got in the car. The windscreen was smeared and it was difficult to make out Mikasa on the doorstep but he held his hand up in a wave anyway. She was still, quiet and Eren hoped she would be alright.  

It took a few attempts to start the ignition but they finally left.

Jean was jittery for a long while but at least his tears had dried up.

 

 

The front door was torn open before Eren and Jean had even crossed the perfectly manicured lawn. Even in the dry dusty heat of the summer the blades of grass glistened green and lush. The man who opened the door was tall and broad and no less put together than the queues of carnations that bordered the lawn.

“What are you doing here?”

Jean hopped up the porch steps quickly. He clearly lacked the self-preservation that prompted Eren to wait at the bottom of the steps and shade his eyes from the sunlight glaring from behind the house. The man grasped one of Jean’s shoulders tightly, desperately, and Jean stopped with the intimate distance and only glanced back at Eren once.

“Erwin, this is Eren. He helped me get here last year too.”

Eren’s skin prickled under the measured gaze of this man. Erwin, always referred to as the neighbour and never as familiarly as the name that had floated from Jean’s lips so softly.

“I asked you a question, Jean.”

Jean’s smile faltered slightly but he quickly pasted it back on with his airy reply. “I came to see you.”

“Why? Why do you think it is acceptable to come and see me?”

If size wasn’t enough to convey the deadliness about this man, his tone was more than enough for Eren. Jean on the other hand was being wilfully dense about the matter. Erwin flinched at the fingers, long and timid, that tugged at the sleeve of his shirt. Eren had no idea what he was supposed to do here now. There was no doubt that he was very different to Erwin.

“I missed you.”

“Why must you-?” The man’s voice broke off and he hissed quietly. He glanced at Eren for a long moment. Eren couldn’t maintain eye contact for longer than a few seconds and wondered whether this was cowardice. Or perhaps Jean’s careful control over the pain that pushed through his countenance was cowardice. Too afraid to admit that the hold on his shoulders was too tight.

“Please, Erwin.” Jean’s voice was smaller than usual, higher than usual, no less fragile than usual.  

Very slowly, Erwin took a few steps backwards, the motion teetering until they had crossed the threshold. The door was open for a minute or so and Eren was certain he could hear the ragged gasps of fresh tears. The door closed. Eren wished he had thought to bring more layers with him than just his t-shirt when he left home.

Eren had never heard Jean yell before but the certainty of the muffled shouting on the other side of the door had Eren’s heart leaping in his chest. The breaks in the sound indicated… something. The conversations was probably not one-sided but Eren found himself irritated at how a person could choose to keep so calm just to discredit a person who was hurt, angry, upset.

Eren waited.

The front door was wrenched open, Jean stomped sullenly. A flash of Erwin, severe, before the door slammed shut. Jean sat on the top step of the porch, ever muscle taut as he glared at the dusty lawn.

“Jean-“

“He’s calling my parents now so you can just… Go away.”

Jean’s voice got smaller and smaller and Eren wondered if it was too optimistic to hope that Jean was torn over telling him to leave. Perhaps not.

“Eren, fuck off. Please.”

Jean’s arms crossed on the top of his knees and the red eyes that had softened damply.

Eren couldn’t just stand there, listening to the wavering of Jean’s voice and watching the miserable tremble of gangly limbs. He took a small step forwards.

“No.”

Eren sighed.

Eren climbed into his car.

Eren drove.

**Author's Note:**

> Did i only want to do three parts because I wanted to sort of do the whole quote (aside from the EPA bit)? Probably.
> 
> But seriously, this isn't how I wanted it but I'm done with this and I sort of just wanted to get rid of it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, I guess.
> 
> Sorry.


End file.
